Small eunicid, Sylliad worm eating SPS? (With Videos)

JordanM · Mar 28, 2019

@KJ @Lovemyreef2015 Here are the videos. Ill take another look and see if the head is more exposed as im guessing the head is the portion that looks like two grinders, almost like a boring machine head:

I do have two yellow corris wrasse that will finish QT on Friday and I will be adding to this tank, however if this "worm" is only out at night, they most likely will not make much of a difference.

KJ · Mar 28, 2019

Great video but still hard to ID. @Bob Loblaw

Lovemyreef2015 · Mar 28, 2019

I've been looking at different species of peanut worms. (Not the ones we normally ID) I found this one. apionsoma. Not sure if that's it, I will keep searching

Bob Loblaw · Mar 28, 2019

JordanM · Mar 28, 2019

I just got done studying it for a few more minutes and what I thought were boring teeth was not. That end of this creature appears to be the bottom. The head appears to be the portion in the video that is moving around more. In the first video i think the head is the end that is towards the top of the video and looks more translucent without the red dots. Also the red dots that I thought could be war coral I do not think they are. I think the red dots are part of this creature. It is definitely formed in a spiral with a tubular section along the outside of the spiral that tapers into a thinner section of connective tissue (where the red dots are located). I do not see an area where this creature would have teeth and actually be able to take a bite of or grind at the coral. Magnification is all the way up as high as it goes to 4 on the dissecting scope Nikon SMZ-10, which should be 40x power with the 10x eyepiece. Thank you for everyone's help trying to ID this. Apparently i am less fortunate to get one of the very few bad worms in the reef community. Give me bristleworms any day which I do not have except for the dorvilleidae.

Lovemyreef2015 · Mar 29, 2019

I've been doing some searching and the only worm that I have found that has that spiral look is a type of ribbon worm either in the Procephalothrix or cephalothrix Genus. Both retract into tight spirals when disturbed. There are quite a few species for both genus so that's as close as I can come to a ID. Here is a example picture of one and how they retract.

JordanM · Mar 30, 2019

Lovemyreef2015 said:
I've been doing some searching and the only worm that I have found that has that spiral look is a type of ribbon worm either in the Procephalothrix or cephalothrix Genus. Both retract into tight spirals when disturbed. There are quite a few species for both genus so that's as close as I can come to a ID. Here is a example picture of one and how they retract.

That does look like it. Any ideas on how to deal with them?

Lovemyreef2015 · Mar 30, 2019

JordanM said:
That does look like it. Any ideas on how to deal with them?

I haven't read any good removal ideas for ribbon worms especially ones that small. Do you dip your coral? You can try a dip (not sure which dip would be the most effective). You can also try manually removing the ones you see.

JordanM · Mar 30, 2019

Ya I dip every coral in flatworm exit, bayer and coralx. I don’t know how these made it through those three dips. I have way to many corals to be able to dip them all. I’m guessing the yellow corris wrasse will do a number on them since these also usually eat bristle worms. I just have to add it from the qt and then will see how things go I guess. I really wish at this point that I had one of the large ribbon worms that are visible instead of these tiny microscopic ones. Who knows how many are even in my tank at this time now.

JordanM · Mar 31, 2019

@Lovemyreef2015 @KJ @Bob Loblaw I found another of these eating away at my war coral this morning. I sucked the area with a pipette and examined it and sure enough there were pieces of this round spiral worm. Im hoping I got it all as I suspect if you tear this worm into pieces it will regrow and replicate. I have another week of hyposalinity to go with my yellow corris wrasse as ive found prazi resistant flukes on it before I am able to add it to the tank. Any ideas how to kill these chemically? Im thinking possibly interceptor might do a number on these? I can remove the inverts so the only think left in this tank would be fish and coral.

JordanM · Apr 4, 2019

@Lovemyreef2015 @KJ Alright so an update on my situation. I suck off these things around the edges of the coral whenever I see them start to slime up and they are definitely the tubular white worms in the previous videos that are doing the damage. I saw this big flower looking thing on the bottom of the tank today and sucked it up to inspect and it looks like it may be one of the others. Oddly enough it looks more like a flower though not like a worm) even when i put it between two slides so that it was flat. I also tried straightening it out into a worm and it maintained this flower looking shape. Im not seeing any mouth on this beast. I am adding the one wrasse on Sunday and will be getting three more yellow corris wrasse and will see if they are interested and limit their numbers.

The one down side is that im betting these worms replicate if you split them and if when I suck them off the coral, I do not get the entire critter it most likely will just grow back. If i get a whole one i may start experimenting with reef safe baths like prazi or FE and see if they are able to be killed at normal doses or elevated for the FE. They were able to take out my war coral, i believe they ate it from the inside out as I started seeing the skeleton though the eyes and it has slowly started to melt. I may try a dip in revive, or coral x and see if i can get it to bounce back but its pretty much gone.

JordanM · Apr 6, 2019

The war coral has been reduced to about 1/4 the size it was and the flesh is sloughing away day by day so today i got out the dips and started to do some experimenting. I looked at the coral under the scope before dipping and you can actually see these worms in the open polyps of the war coral. I started with FW exit, this did not seem to do anything to these worms. Next was coralx, this seemed to remove a few of the worms, i pulled them out and placed them back into clean SW in hopes to save them for testing with prazipro and other reef safe treatments if it comes to that. Next I tried revive, this removed 1-2 large ones but i believe revive and coralx are closely related. The last dip I performed was bayer, there were a few that came off in the bayer. I took a look at the coral after these dips and still saw many of these worms left in the polyps of this coral as you can see from the picture. I tried to blast this worm from the eye with a stream of water and it would not budge loose. Now i have this war coral sitting in a prazipro solution. Any other ideas of reef safe medication to try?

One thing im worried about is these worms invading the internals of an SPS coral and boring throughout the center where no chemicals or predators will be able to get them like they are doing to this war coral. I also worry about them getting in my goni, lps and plate coral and doing this same thing.